Burnham’s Bishops

The entitled Liberal Establishment in the Church of England presumes the right to appoint 26 Members of Parliament, three of whom are also Privy Counsellors, with two of those having until recent events automatically expected life peerages upon retirement.

But it has nothing to fear from Andy Burnham. He personifies the symbiotic relationship between the liberal wing of the Catholic Church and the right wings of the British Labour Party, of the American Democratic Party, of the Australian Labor Party, and so on. Class and regional differences may have put them in a different party, but theologically and socially liberal free-marketeers will be fine. Anti-austerity Anglo-Catholics did better out of a Hindu.

Indeed, there is far too little exercise of the Royal Prerogative by Ministers accountable to the House of Commons, which is what they are paid for. For example, while each generation presumably produces an obvious Astronomer Royal, why hand over the power to appoint Regius Professors, or certain Oxbridge Heads of House, or the Poet Laureate? Never mind the judiciary? But those powers have never been legislated away. Almost nothing in Britain ever is quite abolished or repealed. It falls into prolonged desuetude. But it is still there.